Its been a while since I had the desire to write anything new on the site, I think mainly due to a massive overdose of photo books, prints and all things photography at Paris Photo week last month. What a mixed bag that was, met some great friends again, came across some really interesting work but found the main event in Grand Palais to be a bloated and largely uninteresting affair where I would have to say that I had a strong dislike of about 80% of what I saw. Highlights were the quirky PolyCopy independent photo-books event on a boat on the Seine, the William Eggleston exhibition and my fave of all, a low key Dirk Braekman exhibition at LeBal where I was lucky enough to get a signed copy of his tremendous monograph that I might review at some point if I can get my head around the words and language required to describe this very unique approach and style. Anyway, more than anything, what prompted me to write this week was the arrival of Carolyn Drake’s gorgeous ‘Wild Pigeon’ and I felt utterly compelled to share it here.

I could kick myself for missing out on Carolyn’s previous work ‘Two Rivers’ which is now extremely hard to find and commanding very high prices so as soon as I saw this released I bought it unseen straight away and boy, do I feel good about that decision. The book itself is a dreamy affair and based on the time (7 years off and on) that Carolyn spent with the Uyghur people in their remote homeland. The book itself is elaborate and constructed into five parts that are threaded together by the Wild Pigeon allegorical story written by a local Uyghur, Nurmuhemment Yasin who landed ten years in the clink by the Chinese authorities for his efforts, accused of ‘inciting separatism’ apparently. I might lose some readers at this point but here goes anyway, personally the story is the single most important thing in this book for me and I would ask anyone who gets to read the book to have a think about how the metaphor works on a much grander scale, and I for one can certainly associate myself with its themes, but in a very different way I suspect from the original intention.

“Soul? What’s a soul, grandfather?” a young pigeon beside me asks, I am stunned that he doesn’t know this word, doesn’t know what a soul is. What are these pigeons teaching their children? To live without a soul, without understanding what a soul is, is pointless. Do they not see this? To have a soul, to have freedom - these things cannot be bought or given as gifts; they are not to be had just through praying, either.

Freedom of the soul, I feel, is crucial for these pitiful pigeons. Without it, life is meaningless, and yet they seem never even to have heard of the word.

Maybe now you can get a sense of what a dangerous man Yasin is. I can’t for the life of me but see my own life and society in his writings and I believe the simple story to be far more universal than he imagined. Given that the story and its vehicles and metaphors are the vital link that binds the photographical and artistic sequences together, I think this elevates the book way beyond some commentary on the plight of these poor people and the loss and strangulation of their freedoms, customs and culture. The difference for me in my society and culture is that the suffocation and blinding is much more insidious and subtle.

At the end of the day this is a photo-book review but I would again say that, for me, I consider this to tackle a much broader theme than Carolyn may have thought when she was making it.

Getting back to the photographic content that supports her ideas and themes, there are some really gorgeous, and in a way, understated photographs in here that don’t shout and scream at you for attention but instead build with each other in a dreamy state of suspension and non-reality. The photos have a somehow aged and yet colourful feel to them and the dusty browns and lovely reds create a very atmospheric tone and mood of a contradictory present/past. while every so often hinting at the traps and deprivation of free action and thought, nowhere more so for me than in the following lovely pairing.

Or how about this one:

Thoughtful, purposeful and beautifully inspired photography.

I mentioned the book is in five different sections and this is where it really starts to get interesting. Following a clamp down and increased persecution levels, Carolyn apparently found it extremely difficult to find anyone to engage with her as they were justifiably afraid of retribution so she hit on the idea of letting the people express themselves through her photographs and she gave them the photos, scissors and crayons and left them to it - I think the results are simply wonderful.

I don’t feel any need to say anything about how beautiful these are and how the whole thing now takes on a new dimension and artistic expression.

The book then moves onto the third phase that begins to show more ordinary workaday situations with the overtone of the government driven introduction of Han people into the Uyghur communities and the resulting change in the living environment. Again this is wonderfully shot and at this point I will apologise for my poor photos of the book, I just couldn’t get rid of glare so I decided not to bother trying and just left the shadows from my windows on the shots. Unfortunately the glare and shadows completely ruined a couple of the key images that I wanted to show but here is a selection anyway.

and this incredibly powerful pairing:

Hopefully by now you are beginning to get a feel for the very high standard of photography, editing and sequencing that has gone into this book.

Moving into the fourth section of the book and in some ways this is my least favourite, despite the fact that it starts with a really nice double page shot with some delightful background texture and detail that is probably not so obvious in my clumsy photo of it.

In keeping with the book structure where the photos in each section have been getting progressively bigger, this section has very dark but high impact, full bleed, double spread images that strongly suggest that people are afraid and in hiding.

Unlike the other sections, people are mainly absent but somehow Carolyn still manages a very atmospheric passage with the dark building and fences punctuated with sharp lighting as if the inhabitants are under curfew (hmm, maybe they are)

We then have the final photographic phase which follows a translated reproduction of the Wild Pigeon story and, even if you don’t buy the photo-book, I would strongly urge that you track down a copy of this text, read it and see if you see any parallels in your own life and environment. The last section is in the form of a small pasted-in booklet that is based on found photographs and their poignency is very striking through the artificial reproduction of these idealistic and escapist, imagined realities.

Phew, its an understatement to say that there is a lot to this book and therein lies one of its very great strengths, this is a book that you can return to again and again. It can be as simple or complex as you want, you can dip in or spend a long time studying and reading through its images and texts.

If I am honest, when I first opened it I thought ‘oh no, a concept book’ where I imagined that the concept and physical structures would be more important than the content but this, as I hope you can clearly see, is very definitely not the case. This is a concept that is as confined or grand scale as you are prepared to allow it be.

I have had some time to look at this book now and to ask myself what it is that so captivates me about its themes and metaphors. Well, on the first level you can clearly see the plight of these poor people and their entrapment, loss of culture, ideals, values and ultimately their freedom to speak, move, behave or interact in a way that they wish. If you want to take this further, have a think about your own life and apparent freedom, do you have a sense that your becoming detached from your culture and that you have lost the freedom of vision to see and understand your purpose in being?

I think the Wild Pigeon story resonates with me in so many ways and that is a tribute to how Carolyn has thought this through and put it together. Its that very unique combination of being both a visual treat and also a very sincere and genuinely thought provoking look at what happens in life when we loose our way and our ability to do the right things as human beings - maybe through our blindness to true nature or soul.

Colin Steel, Sunday 21st December 2014, Singapore